


Keith and Yorak

by maginot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 03:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15597630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maginot/pseuds/maginot
Summary: “What’s what?” Keith asks, playing dumb. Suddenly, his earlier confidence is gone and he’s left with nothing but doubt. He and Shiro haven’t been together that long. He’s twenty four years old. He has never paid a bill in his entire life. What the hell was he thinking? Shiro’s still recovering from years of torture. Shiro is going to, he’s going to-“That, uh, little bundle you got there on your chest.”“It’s, uh, a baby.”“Keith, why do you have a baby?”





	Keith and Yorak

The war is over, and Keith can’t help feeling like it’s his fault.

No, not the whole thing, but the damage on earth, feels like it wouldn’t be as dramatic as it is if he and the rest of the paladins hadn’t been involved. If he hasn’t found the energy from the blue lion. Really, he knows it’s bullshit. Zarkon was on his way to earth and would have enslaved it, if not destroyed the entire planet if it weren’t for all of them finding the blue lion after Shiro had crash-landed back onto earth that night. But the guilt still sits there, and Keith doesn’t know what to do with it besides to help pick up the pieces. 

He volunteers down at the closest hospital to the Garrison on Thursdays, and that’s where he is now, feeling a little lost and overwhelmed as he stands in the middle of a nurses station in a plain black shirt and jeans, his blade holstered behind his back as always, and his hair tied up in the back. The past few weeks prior, he and Shiro had both been here helping to rebuilding the crumbled parts of the hospital. It was quick work with the rest of the paladins and countless volunteers, and now Keith just feels out of place along the bustling qualified medical personnel.

“Oh hey, Keith!” Calls a voice behind him. He turns, its Natalie, the nurse supervisor. She’s a sweet lady in her early forties with kind eyes and a gentle smile that took to Keith and Shiro instantly. “I didn’t know you’d be coming back since the repairs were finished.” 

“Yeah, well,” Keith stuffs his hands in his pockets, swaying on the balls of his feet. “I figured you could always use the help.”

Natalie unleashes that gentle smile of hers onto Keith . “Did Shiro come today?”

“No. He’s working on the house.” And Keith can’t help the way that he blushes. Having an actual house with Shiro is a new concept for him. 

Natalie just smiles bigger. “I’m so happy for y’all.” Then she says, “Oh! You can help me take these supplies up to the nursery floor.” She points to a closet and when Keith peaks in, its packed to the brim with cardboard boxes.

Keith returns her smile. “That I can do.”

After he finishes his work, Keith takes a moment to peak inside the glass that separates the nursery from the rest of the floor to keep it quiet. Inside of the room are rows of plastic bassinets along with dozens of rocking chairs and couches. In them, are parents holding their children, smiling or sleeping or something in between. It makes Keith’s chest feel warm. They’re safe. He did something right. 

Natalie finds him there. “We’re using this section is the hospital to house parents with small babies who have been displaced.”

That’s when Keith notices that all of the bassinets are empty, except for one. “Where’s that baby’s family?”

Natalie sighs and slowly she says, “They didn’t make it. He’s the only one, which is something we’re happy about considering. He’s healthy, strong. With the amount of volunteers, workers and the other parents, he will be well taken care of until things settle enough for us to find him somewhere else to go.” 

_Somewhere else to go_. The words echo painfully through Keith’s mind. He remembers overhearing that. He remembers being shuffled from foster family to foster family until everyone had given up on him and he was sent to an overcrowded and underfunded group home as a teenager. Everyone, that is, except for Shiro. It was Shiro who finally figured out a way for Keith to get out of the hopeless cycle he had been stuck into. It was Shiro who finally gave him a home. Keith thinks to Shiro now, probably with a nail between his teeth and a hammer in his hand. It’s Shiro who’s still giving him a home. 

Keith looks to Natalie. “Can I hold him?”

Natalie gets Keith settled in a rocking chair. She’s smiling even brighter than before, like this new soft baby-cuddling side of Keith just makes her opinion of him go up even more. “This is one of the most helpful things you can do for a baby. He’s only three months old, and at this age, touch is imperative to their development and survival. Just hold your arm out like so-- yes, brace your elbow on the side of the chair and-”

And then Keith has a baby in his arms. Keith blinks down at him, and gets what he thinks is the meanest possible scowl from a three-month-old possible. He thinks Natalie woke him up, and now being passed to Keith is even more of an inconvenience. He has almond-shaped brown eyes and a tuft of brown hair just at the front of his head that makes Keith think of Shiro straight away. His skin is light-brown, and the softest thing Keith’s ever touched. The baby feels like something precious in his arms, something invaluable. He uses his heels to start rocking the chair back and forth, hoping that the baby might stop giving him such a dirty look. Natalie reaches over him and sticks a green pacifier into his mouth, cooing gently as she does. Keith can’t look away from the baby, completely enamored by his round cheeks and his little button nose. Then the most magical thing happens. It’s more magical than getting sucked into a wormhole, or diving into a field of pure quintessence. It’s more magical than anything he’s ever seen out in space, more than anything Allura could do, more than he’s ever heard of happening. The baby turns his head into Keith’s chest gently, gives this little hitching sigh and then closes his eyes and falls asleep. 

Keith thinks what he feels like right now is better than what it felt like to fly for the first time. 

He looks up at Natalie, trying to school his face into something other than, ‘I will burn down the entire world for this baby’ but he’s pretty sure he fails. He swallows and asks, “Can I bring him home?”

Home, for Keith, is the same as it was before this all started. Well, mostly. After the war ended, he, Shiro and Krolia all found themselves without a solid place to go. Keith decided to make his way back out to the little wooden shack by the lake he stayed in while Shiro was gone, and was more than pleased to find it still standing. With the help of the other paladins, they enlarged it. Now it has the makings of a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom and three bedrooms, like a real house. It took them until they had finished building the third bedroom before Keith and Shiro finally, finally got their act together, which is something Keith’s grateful for now as he walks up to his front door with the baby sleeping and carefully wrapped in blankets in his arms. 

“Hey!” he calls out to Shiro, shutting the front door behind him. “Is my mom home?” It still feels weird to say, but right now it feels apt. He sets his bag down and sees his wolf sleeping peacefully in the chair.

“No,” Shiro answers from the kitchen. “She’s doing a good will mission for the blades. Left this morning.” Keith hears the distinct sound of tools being placed on a wooden floor before he sees Shiro head out to him, smile bright as sunshine, wiping his hands off with a towel. Shiro’s smile falters when he sees Keith. “Keith, what’s that?”

“What’s what?” Keith asks, playing dumb. Suddenly, his earlier confidence is gone and he’s left with nothing but doubt. He and Shiro haven’t been together that long. He’s twenty four years old. He has never paid a bill in his entire life. What the hell was he thinking? Shiro’s still recovering from years of torture. Shiro is going to, he’s going to-

“That, uh, little bundle you got there on your chest.”

“It’s, uh, a baby.”

“Keith, why do you have a baby?” 

Keith shifts on his feet, and feels the baby wiggle in his arms. He looks down, pushing the blankets back out of his face a little. Keith hadn’t noticed how long and dark his eyelashes were before. He’s sleeping again after having woken up to eat before they left the hospital. Natalie had made the bottle for him and shown him how to feed the baby before sending Keith home with a few days of supplies. Looking at the baby now, sucking his green pacifier again, Keith feels all his earlier confidence return at once. He looks up at Shiro again, feeling the determination running through him. “Because he didn’t have a home. His parents didn’t make it. He didn’t have anywhere to go.” 

Shiro’s frown cracks open into something that looks like how Keith’s heart felt when Natalie told him the same thing. He closes the distance between them, placing his metal hand on the small of Keith’s back. He meets Keith’s eyes for a second, reading him, and then uses his left hand to uncover the baby’s face fully from the blankets. Shiro’s sigh is full of wonder. “Okay,” he says, eyes still trained on the baby. Then he leans over and kisses Keith on the cheek. It’s a beat too long for your average cheek kiss, and Keith knows that’s Shiro’s way of saying he understands and that he’s not just agreeing to agree. He’d do the same thing too. “Okay.”

It takes them forty-five minutes to realize they know nothing about babies. 

The baby is wailing, Shiro’s gotten peed on trying to change a diaper and the bottle Keith made looks more like white mud than milk. “Okay that’s it!” he grunts. Shiro is walking around with the baby, quietly shushing him to get him to stop wailing. “I’m calling Krolia.”

Krolia patches them into her comms. Keith can hear that she’s flying. “Keith,” she says by way of greeting. 

Keith doesn’t know his mother as well as most twenty-four year olds do, but it does give him one advantage. 

“ _Mom_ , I need you help.” 

He fills Krolia in on the entire story, and just like Shiro, she doesn’t have to ask any questions. “Fine.” She says in that matter-of-fact way of hers. “I’ll come help, but only if you name him Yorak.” 

Keith chuckles a bit, remembering the memory his mother had passed to him. “You want us to name him Yorak?”

“Yes.”

From behind him, he hears Shiro saying, “No! What? No way!” 

Keith smiles, “Yorak is perfect.”

Shiro sighs, defeated. “Yorak it is.” 

Krolia says, “I’m on my way.” 

...

After she arrives, Keith almost wishes she didn’t.

“You two are paladins of Voltron! How can you not figure out how to read the directions on the side of a container?”

“Shiro, that’s not how you put on a baby’s shirt.”

“Keith, that diaper is backwards!”

But then, after the baby’s asleep in his arms again (Keith refuses to put him down to sleep. Krolia insists that tomorrow if they don’t buy him a crib, she will)-- with Shiro tucked up into his side, his head on Keith’s shoulder, the two of them just staring down at their baby like he can hang all the moons they’ve ever seen-- that she says, “I’m proud of you two, you know? What you’re doing now is just as brave as what you’ve done before.” 

Keith looks up from her, managing to give her a tiny smile without doing something like crying. “Thanks.”

“Now both of you better go upstairs and sleep before he wakes up in two hours.”

“Two hours?” Shiro exclaims. He looks at Keith, and Keith just shrugs. 

They fall asleep together, Shiro, Keith with Yorak carefully set between them with plenty of room in their bed, their wolf sleeping at their feet, unsure of this new loud creature but guarding it all the same.

Just like clockwork, they’re up two hours later. The baby cries, and surprisingly Shiro smiles, big and happy. Keith kisses him and then gets up to make a bottle. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm coping before season 7. I might expand on this verse if anyone's interested! Come find me on tumblr @ pieceofsheith or on twitter @ gay_Shiro!


End file.
